Displaying list from the content returned by controller

[Jack Tauson]

I have the following controller:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/grid")
public class GridController {
	
	private CleanupFileUtils lfu = new CleanupFileUtils();
 
	@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public ModelAndView list() {
 
		ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
		mav.setViewName("grid");
		
		List<CleanupFile> cleanups = lfu.getRecentPendingRecords();
		List<CleanupFileWrapper> lfws = new ArrayList<>();
		for (CleanupFile lf : cleanups) {
			lfws.add(new CleanupFileWrapper(lf));
		}
 
		mav.addObject("pendinglist", lfws);
 
		return mav;
	}
}

And when I use it like this to display the contents in a display table on JSP/HTML, it works fine:

<display:table name="pendinglist" class="list" requestURI=""
  id="orderList" pagesize="150" sort="list">
 
  <display:column property="cleanupFile.fileName"
    href="Cleanup.html?meth=viewSeq" paramId="id"
    paramProperty="cleanupFile.cleanupFileId" title="Cleanup File"
    sortable="true" />
  <display:column property="cleanupFile.comment" title="Comment" />
  <display:column property="ready" title="Ready" sortable="true" />
</display:table>
</div>

So I can see a list of file names under :Cleanup File column and similar for coment and Ready column.

Instead of displaying them in the table, I want to have it displayed as a list. So I was trying something ike this:

<div>
  <select id="pendinglist">
    <option value="-" label="--Please Select--">
    <options
      items="cleanupFile.fileName"
      itemValue="cleanupFile.lineupFileId"
     
    />
  </select>
</div>

But it doesn't displays file names in the dropdown list. Do I need to have form tag and have everything inside form to achieve this?

[Bear Bibeault]

HTML select elements are largely un-stylable. What are you trying to achieve?

[Bear Bibeault]

P.S. If you want to get fancy with CSS and are targeting only modern browsers, here's an article that might be helpful.

[Jack Tauson]

Bear Bibeault wrote:HTML select elements are largely un-stylable. What are you trying to achieve?

I would like to display all the filenames in a dropdown list. It works fine in case of display table as I mentioned but I am little confused how to make it work for select options tag of HTML

[Bear Bibeault]

Your HTML for the select element should contain only options elements, and optionally optgroup and hr elements.

[Jack Tauson]

Bear Bibeault wrote:Your HTML for the select element looks fine at initial inspection. What problem are you having with it?

The only thing in the dropdown I see is "--Please Select--" which is hardcoded by me. It's not displaying anything related to "cleanupFile.fileName" in the dropdown list. Anything wrong I'm doing to display this?

[Bear Bibeault]

I revised my post. You'd need to loop through your list and create an option element for each choice.

[Jack Tauson]

Bear Bibeault wrote:I revised my post. You'd need to loop through your list and create an option element for each choice.

Can you show me an example? I mean I know how to do it via jQuery and Javascript but I am wondering in JSP, how would I figure out upto what length I need to loop etc. Thanks!

[Bear Bibeault]

That depends on what tag library you are using. It will likely have tags for looping over a list or array of data.

[Jack Tauson]

Bear Bibeault wrote:That depends on what tag library you are using. It will likely have tags for looping over a list or array of data.

I am using JSTL

[Bear Bibeault]

Then you would use <c:forEach> to iterate over your data.

[Jack Tauson]

Bear Bibeault wrote:Then you would use <c:forEach> to iterate over your data.

Thanks. I modified my code to use that and it looks like this:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="cleanupFile">
       <option value="${cleanupFile.cleanupFileId}">${cleanupFile.fileName}</option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>

Could you take a look and see if it is looking fine?

[Jack Tauson]

Jack Tauson wrote:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="cleanupFile">
       <option value="${cleanupFile.cleanupFileId}">${cleanupFile.fileName}</option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>

After testing the above change, I am getting this error:

Error: Property [fileName] not found on type [com.mydatabase.wrapper.CleanupFileWrapper]

What could be the reason?

[Mike Simmons]

Does the class CleanupFileWrapper have a method like getFileName()?  Can you show the declaration of the field you're attempting to access, and its getter?

[Jack Tauson]

Mike Simmons wrote:Does the class CleanupFileWrapper have a method like getFileName()?  Can you show the declaration of the field you're attempting to access, and its getter?

CleanupFileWrapper has following declarations inside it:

private CleanupFile cleanupFile;
 
 
	public CleanupFileWrapper(CleanupFile cleanupFile) {
		this.cleanupFile = cleanupFile;
	}
 
	public CleanupFile getCleanupFile() {
		return cleanupFile;
	}

The getFileName() is defined inside CleanupFile. So I guess I am trying to access it correctly in my JSP if I do it like this : cleanupFile.fileName , cleanupFile.cleanupFileId ?




Similarly, when I tested the following:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="cleanupFile">
       <option value="${cleanupFile.cleanupFileId}"></option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>

I ended up getting the error:

Error: Property [cleanupFileId] not found on type [com.mydatabase.wrapper.CleanupFileWrapper]

Seems like it's not going one more level deep or I'm accessing it incorrectly?

[Mike Simmons]

The error message suggests that the thing you're calling a "cleanupFile" is actually a CleanupFileWrapper.  And from your code, CleanupFileWrapper has a property named cleanupFile, not cleanupFileId.  And what you really want is the fileName inside the CleanupFile which is inside the CleanupFileWrapper.  So I think you need something like this:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="cleanupFileWrapper">
       <option value="${cleanupFileWrapper.cleanupFile.fileName}"></option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>

[Jack Tauson]

Mike Simmons wrote:The error message suggests that the thing you're calling a "cleanupFile" is actually a CleanupFileWrapper.  And from your code, CleanupFileWrapper has a property named cleanupFile, not cleanupFileId.  And what you really want is the fileName inside the CleanupFile which is inside the CleanupFileWrapper.  So I think you need something like this:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="cleanupFileWrapper">
       <option value="${cleanupFileWrapper.cleanupFile.fileName}"></option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>

Thanks. Yeah, I used it like this and it worked:

<select name="pendinglist">
   <c:forEach items="${pendinglist}" var="wrapper">
       <option value="${wrapper.cleanupFile.fileName}"></option>
   </c:forEach>
</select>